(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an optical disc drive for recording data on a recordable optical disc, and more particularly to a technique for processing recorded data associated with a recording failure due to a physical defect present on a recording surface of an optical disc.
(2) Description of the Related Art
During recording with a conventional optical disc drive using a recordable optical disc such as a DVD-R, a physical defect on the recording surface of the optical disc can cause off-tracking or defocusing and may thus result in a recording failure. If this actually happens, the drive returns error information to the host apparatus that has instructed the drive to record. After receiving the error information, the host apparatus gives a recording cancellation command to the drive to stop recording on the optical disc. After this, the user performs either of the processes below to make no recorded data readable from the disc on which data recording has been stopped.
For example, it is described in JP-A-09-288823 that when recorded information is erased from the specified area on an optical disc, the information can be made unreadable by overwriting the corresponding area with required pattern data. Also, according to the PLEXTOR Internet information website named “PX-OE100E PLEXERASER Product Information” (URL:http://plextor.jp/product/pxoe100e/features.php), data present on the recording layer of an optical disc can be erased by irradiating the recording layer directly with laser light using a special data destruction device for disc data erasure. The two methods are both effective in that leakage of the data recorded on the disc can be prevented by rendering the disc data unreadable.